Tussling
in the Bush Foreign Policy Team?

Even
as Dubya is earning unexpectedly good reviews for his first couple of weeks
in office (a generally meaningless indicator of which the media are nonetheless
inordinately fond), especially for his deft handling of domestic issues and
Congress, there are rumblings about rifts among the Bush foreign policy advisers.
Or perhaps some folks are trying to get some rifts going, or at least some rumblings,
for their own purposes.

Of
course Lawrence Kaplan, who has dealt with potential Bushie rifts most
extensively in the February 5 issue of the New Republic has an agenda
that is hardly hidden. The TNR senior editor wants the United States
to be a proper superpower, flexing muscles and fixing messes around the world.
He has been denouncing the alleged isolationism, even pacifism of Colin Powell
for months now, most recently in a couple of TNR articles critical of
the "Powell Doctrine" of avoiding military involvement unless firm
public support, overwhelming force, a definable mission and a clear exit strategy
are in place titled "Yesterdayís Man" in the January 1 & 8 issue.

CHENEY
AS ENFORCER

In
his current piece, Kaplan casts Vice President Dick Cheney as the aggressive
keeper of the interventionist tablets, claiming that despite denials of any
friction with Secretary of State Colin Powell, "Cheney has effectively
created his own foreign policy apparatus, installing his protégés
(and, in the case of Donald Rumsfeld, his mentor) at the Defense Department
and the White House. And, because many of Cheneyís protégés are
known for their willingness to use military force, what began as a clash of
personalities is fast becoming a war of ideas."

On
the one side, Kaplan says  and others have reported similar bifurcations
 will be Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, installed by Cheney after
a tussle between Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (reportedly Powellís preference)
and defense intellectual Paul Wolfowitz became desultory. So Wolfowitz, described
by Kaplan as "even more hawkish than his boss," got the number two
job at Defense. Wolfowitz made his Washington debut in the 1970s as head of
the conservative "Team B" that 1976 challenged the CIAís essentially
rosy détente-minded assessment of Soviet capabilities and intentions.
He rose quickly during the Reagan and elder Bush administrations, and in 1992
provoked controversy by advising that that United States exploit its supremacy
for "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional
or global role." Wolfowitz reportedly brings with him, and has sprinkled
through the bureaucracy, a cadre of like-minded lieutenants. I. Lewis Libby,
a former Wolfowitz aide, is Cheneyís chief of staff. Eric Edelman, a former
Wolfowitz colleague, will be Libbyís right-hand man. William Schneider, a former
Reagan official, is working on Defense transition issues and reportedly can
have whatever top job he wants. Zalmay Khalilzad, with a long record of trying
to get the United States to support insurgencies against rulers in Bosnia and
Iraq, is also said to be in line for a top Pentagon job.

POWELL
AS PACIFIST?

Lawrence Kaplan counts National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice as a generally
noninterventionist thinker who, as he puts it, "though not quite as rigid
as Powell, nonetheless tends toward a crabbed view of Americaís global role."
(Donít you just love the insistence on strictly descriptive terms rather than
emotive ones?) Condoleezzaís deputy, Stephen Hadley, who resisted the Bosnian
intervention and criticized the Clinton administration for "being too quick
to reach out to the military instrument," is counted on the side of those
who will not be  well, too quick to reach out to the military instrument.

Kaplan
notes that having Powell as Secretary of State and Rumsfeld as Secretary of
defense makes for something of a role reversal. Since Vietnam, by and large,
it has been the State Department that has been for intervention and the Pentagon
that has urged caution. (As a defense intellectual rather than someone with
experience as cannon fodder, Kaplan is on the side of the mighty interventionists
and canít seem to understand why those military people are such wusses. Donít
you love my own insistence on non-emotive descriptions?)

STACKING
THE BUREAUCRACIES

But
as far as Kaplan can see  and he may be indulging in wishful thinking
 the Cheney-Rumsfeld boys will roll over Powell and Rice like Hitler through
Czechoslovakia. On foreign affairs Dick Cheney is likely to run the White House
inasmuch as Dubya himself has little interest in foreign policy, and that will
more than trump the fact that Bush feels personally close to and comfortable
with Condoleezza Rice and trusts her judgment. Powell has stacked the State
Department with people loyal to him and with experienced career civil servants
rather than political types. But in policy battles, Kaplan claims, the political
types win and the civil servants go along.

"As
for Rice," claims Kaplan, "her stature shrinks by the day." Talking
about pulling out of the Balkans during the campaign, he thinks, was a blunder
of major proportions that simply freaked out the Europeans. Iím not so sure
it was a blunder, and itís worth noting that Ms. Rice was appointed after that
flap, so maybe Dubya doesnít see it as a blunder to the extent Kaplan does.

Kaplan
does claim that whereas Powell and Rice should be allies against the mighty
bureaucratic heft of the Cheney-Rumsfeld interventionist on-the-side-of-history
types, Powell views Condoleezza Rice less as an ally than as a competitor, having
taken the job with the understanding that she wouldnít get in his way. Kaplan
quotes an unnamed Rumsfeld ally with obvious relish: "Sheís going to be
crushed. Itís as simple as that."

UNRELIABLE
ALLIES

For
those who hope for a foreign policy that is at least a little less imperialist,
a little less casual in its commitment of American prestige and treasure to
conflicts of dubious relevance to American national interest (whatever that
is), all this could be pretty grim news. The idea that the best hope for common
sense is Colin Powell, who hasnít exactly been a profile in courage and might
even be described as something of a careerist and an opportunist who doesnít
like taking risks that might besmirch his precious image is not exactly reassuring.
And the notion that this experienced bureaucratic infighter is being outmaneuvered
in the bureaucratic infighting to boot is not the best of news.

On the other hand, Dubya has so far created the impression that he is more his
own man than almost any observer believed he would be. On domestic policy (understanding
that itís early and first impressions are often wrong) there seems to be little
question that he is more in charge than most had expected that he would be.
Perhaps the buck will really stop with him, and the fact that he feels a special
closeness to Condie Rice will give her more influence that Lawrence Kaplan would
like her to have. And although the Pentagon and the Treasury Department have
had an increasingly influential role in foreign affairs of late, thereís little
question that Colin Powell will run the State Department  and the State
Department is still the major locus of policy decision on international matters
in the U.S. government.

NO
CONTROLLING AUTHORITY

I
talk to a lot of people, but I havenít lived and worked in Washington for more
than 20 years, so Iím sure there are subtleties of which I canít be aware. I
can claim no particular insight into the personalities involved beyond having
spent a couple of hours talking policy with Condoleezza Rice, back when she
was still Provost of Stanford but had already announced that she was leaving
to join the Bush campaign. She was thoughtful, informed and eminently likable.

She
listened politely and apparently with respect when I laid out the concerns I
had about an expansive global role for the US government. I remember wondering
at the time  having had experience with people coming into editorial board
meetings and trying to convince you they were really almost allies  whether
she was shining me on. But she has since stayed with the position she outlined
at the time  that the United States is and should be a global power, but
that it should understand that its major interests lie in Europe, the Middle
East and to some extent in Asia, and that involvement in the affairs of other
countries should be based on a cold-blooded assessment of national interest
rather than an inchoate desire to do good.

The
misgivings about "humanitarian" interventions and "nation-building"
commitments, about running around bragging that we are the "indispensable
nation" and imagining that we have a unique ability to solve problems because
weíre the great and powerful Oz, about confusing the ability to lob bombs with
the ability to solve problems that she expressed when she talked to me have
not disappeared. She has continued to express them even in the face of ridicule
from the likes of Lawrence Kaplan and other world-savers. She may not be much
of a bureaucratic infighter, but she has been reasonably intellectual consistent
 not that thatís likely to be much of an advantage in Washington.

WAIT
AND SEE?

It
may just be possible, then, that the Lawrence Kaplans of this world are indulging
in wishful thinking (or using apparent analysis to influence the balance of
forces in their intellectual favor) when they predict that the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz
axis will roll over the ineffectual pacifist Powell-Rice wing. If Dubya turns
out to be more his own man than most observers had expected  which I have
to confess I view as possible  and he views Rice and Powell with respect,
his very inexperience might cause him to incline toward caution when it comes
to future interventions.

Colin
Powell hardly inspired great confidence when he said, on the eve of the Israeli
elections, that developments in that region will be a top priority for the Bush
administration. Now he might have been simply mouthing the proper pieties even
as he privately believes that if anything the region has suffered in the last
year more from an excess of American attention than from neglect. But if he
really believes that he could have found a way to avoid mouthing the pieties
in those terms.

Kaplan
thinks the major policy disputes will come over the Balkans, Iraq and China,
where the Cheney-Rumsfeld side is inclined to opt for involvement and action
while the Powell-Rice side urges caution and maybe pullback. But events almost
always surprise the prognosticators. The first real test that helps us to descry
the shape of the Bush foreign policy could come in response to a crisis elsewhere
 perhaps in the Middle East if the ascent of Ariel Sharon leads to Palestinians
and Arabs escalating action to the level of their rhetoric.

So
itís well to be aware of analyses by such as Kaplan of the way bureaucratic
forces are arrayed in Washington. But itís still a bit early to predict just
how the Bush foreign policy is likely to play out in practice.

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